Feedback and Support

Upgrade Projects to Visual Studio 2017

When following the supported upgrade paths, your Visual Studio source, solutions, and project files will continue
to work; however, you should expect to make some changes to sources. While we cannot guarantee binary compatibility
between releases, we will do our best to document significant changes to assist you with updates.

Platform Targeting

Visual Studio provides cutting-edge tools and technologies to create apps that take advantage of the
latest platform capabilities, whether Windows, Android, iOS, or Linux. Visual Studio 2017 also targets
earlier platforms so you can create new apps or modernize existing apps that execute on earlier versions
of Windows while leveraging the enhanced development tools, quality enablement, and team collaboration
capabilities in Visual Studio 2017. For more information, see Managing references in a
project and Visual Studio Multi-Targeting
Overview.

Universal Windows app development for all target platforms is available when Visual Studio is installed on Windows 10.

Universal Windows apps can be built from the command line when using Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server 2016. UWP development—including
designing, editing, and local debugging—is not available on Windows Server. You may deploy these apps to Windows server and debug them remotely.

Cordova, Unity, and Xamarin can also be used for cross-platform development of Universal Windows Apps on Windows 10.

Visual Studio 2017 Support for .NET Development

Visual Studio 2017 supports development of apps that use any of the .NET implementations. Among the workloads and project types, you can find support for
.NET Framework, .NET Core, Mono, and .NET Native for Universal Windows Platform (UWP). Visual Studio 2017 supports the following implementations:

Visual Studio 2017 Support for Android Development

Visual Studio 2017 enables you to build native Android apps using Xamarin and C# or using Java/C++, and hybrid
Android apps using Apache Cordova 6.3.1 and JavaScript and TypeScript. The Visual Studio Tools for Unity and
the Unreal Engine enable Android game development. You can also use Visual Studio for Mac
to build Android apps using a Mac.

You can use Visual Studio setup to easily obtain the Android SDK and Android API levels 19, 21, 22, and 23.
You can download additional API levels separately using the Android SDK Manager.
You can also use Visual Studio Setup to obtain the Android Native Development Kit (R10E), Java SE Development Kit, and Apache Ant.

Visual Studio 2017 Support for iOS Development

Visual Studio 2017 enables you to build and debug apps for iOS by using Apache Cordova, C++, Unity, or Xamarin
and a Mac configured for iOS development when using remotebuild, vcremote, the Visual Studio Tools for Unity,
or the Xamarin Mac Agent. Xamarin supports iOS 7 and higher, and requires OS X 10.10 "Yosemite" or higher.
Apache Cordova supports iOS 8 and higher, and requires OS X 10.9 "Mavericks" and higher. You can also use
Visual Studio for Mac to build iOS apps using a Mac.

Visual Studio 2017 Support for Linux Development

Visual Studio 2017 enables you to build and debug apps for Linux using C++, Python, and Node.js.
Creating C++ apps for Linux requires the
Visual C++ for Linux Development extension. Creating apps with Python or
Node,js, requires that you enable remote debugging on the target Linux machine. You can also create, build
and remote debug .NET Core and ASP.NET Core applications for Linux using modern languages such as C#, VB and F#.

.NET Framework

Team Explorer and Team Foundation Server

Team Explorer for Visual Studio 2017 will connect to Team Foundation Server 2017, Team Foundation Server 2015,
Team Foundation Server 2013, Team Foundation Server 2012, and Team Foundation Server 2010 SP1.

Silverlight

Silverlight projects are not supported in this version of Visual Studio. To maintain Silverlight applications,
continue to use Visual Studio 2015.

Windows Store and Windows Phone apps

Projects for Windows Store 8.1 and 8.0, and Windows Phone 8.1 and 8.0 are not supported in this release. To
maintain these apps, continue to use Visual Studio 2015. To maintain Windows Phone 7.x projects, use Visual Studio 2012.